Hyperthymesia
by NRATQH
Summary: Everyone always forgets that Starfire has lived through war, betrayal, slavery, torture, experiments all as a child. It's a point she doesn't explain to those who don't ask. She prefers it that way. She's not a martyr. She doesn't want pity. It's easier to be jovial and carefree without it breathing down her neck. But does she remember? Yes. With painful detail... canon compliant
Stafire remembers what it felt like to be _whole_. She remembers what it felt like to be innocent and curious and kind and happy. But most importantly she remembers what it felt like to be free. It's all she can do now. Remember, remember, remember.

Like what it felt like to curl in her Knorfka's giant arms and fall asleep to the sound of his lullabies. Or meet her sister's eyes and not feel a frightening chill roll down her spine from the piercing hate that now stared back. She remembers how her little brother used to smile at her as if she were an angel even when he was breathing his last in Blackfire's arms. She remembers what it felt like to hear her siblings laugh, the sound a thousand fireworks going of at once to fill the air with a brilliant light that lifted her _soul_. She remembers the feel of the Tamaran sun on her skin. Warmth that wrapped around her like a fur coat in the dead of winter. She remembers the love of her people, sweet and gentle, caring for her as they did their own children more than her own parents ever did.

She remembers all of it like precious jewels in her hand that brighten the darkness whenever she needed it to. Memories grasped like old friends she would never see again when the war began and she became a slave to the Gordanians. After that the things she remembered were drastically different and she started wishing she would forget. But she never did.

It started with small things, hunger, the way it laid in her stomach like a rock and burrowed deeper with each passing minute, twisting her insides into coiled springs that never really disappeared even when her guards remembered to feed her. The darkness and silence that accompanied her in her cell, oppressive, impenetrable. So much so that she would weep just to hear a sound.

But she remembers thinking the pain and abuse was a welcome compared to the torture that awaited her in the laboratories. The knowledge of knowing how it would feel to be torn apart one string of muscle at a time, unraveled like a doll. The feeling of skin peeling of flesh, agony so deep it felt like molten gold creeping down her throat. She remembers being opened, raw, displayed like a corpse in a slaughterhouse for all eyes to see. She remembers being blind and the panic that followed, seeping through her skin. She remembers going deaf and holding her head in her hands wondering if she'd finally gone insane. She remembers forgetting how to breath and how her lungs _burned._ Fire, tearing her throat to shreds.

Than she remembers getting it all back and how it was so much _**worse**_. The sensory overload flaying away her mind one image at a time because the world was screaming at her and she couldn't stop any of it because she was sure she was dead but if she was dead than why wouldn't the world stop screaming?

She remembers it all and some nights what she remembers visits her dreams in an odd melded picture that made no sense, like the beautiful Tamaran sun on her skin burning her insides to ash. Her siblings joyful laughter piercing her ear drums like screeching animals or her tender Knorfka's arms crushing and grinding her bones to dust till there's nothing left to feel and nothing left to suffer than and only than will her eyes open to the ceiling of her room, slowly almost as if they were afraid they couldn't.

Her torture isn't random, she was told. The words offered by the Psion scientists as if for comfort like offering clothes to a starving child. It's methodical. Calculated. Analytical. Even systematic. She should be honoured to be chosen to participate. A rare _specimen_ they had never thought they could get their hands on.

It's all a game her captors explained. But once you've played you can never stop and in a way she never does. She's not sure if it's because she doesn't know how or because she doesn't want to. There's a part of her that's afraid if she truly stops, she'll find there's nothing left of her in the end. To quit the game and realize she'd lost and they'd taken everything.

She wonders if that's what happened to her sister. That maybe she stopped playing and she lost and doesn't even have herself anymore. To be the person-the sister-she used to be.

The thought grips her like a vice. Because she's just a puppet with strings interwoven into her being. A marionette playing the part, pretending to be what she used to be and she is completely and utterly terrified that if the strings are cut she will fall, paralysed by her own weight. A sack of flesh and bones too tired to weep, to go on, to ask for help.

Her sister had always been so much braver than her or at least so much better at fighting back.


End file.
